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“The diner?”
Mack nodded his head.
Brenda glanced behind her, saw Melvin still lying unconscious in the shadows of the bay, and moved to join Mack. She stepped from the dirt parking lot onto a sun-baked sidewalk.
At that moment, a small boy burst out of a hot general store, spotted Mack and Brenda, and yelled, “You better run or you'll die! They'll kill you like they killed my daddy!”
Mack and Brenda watched the boy take off across the street and vanish into the small diner.
“Let's get a cold drink,” Mack grunted and began making his way toward the diner. Brenda checked her gun and followed as the sun continued to bake her mind.
Chapter 2
Dry and dusty air slapped Mack in his stone face as he walked through a hazy glass door, scuffed and clouded with grit from the street. He stepped into a long rectangular room lined with green booths, brown paneled walls, and an old, cracked, brown linoleum floor. A long wooden counter sat at the end of the room. It was empty—except that Adam Frinton was everywhere. Photos of the smiling man were pasted all over the walls. “That's Adam Frinton,” Mack grunted under his voice, “the cult guy.” Mack scanned the diner for the strange kid who had thrown that dangerous warning into the hot air outside.
Brenda scanned a large photo sitting over the first booth and memorized the face, then searched for the missing boy. “Smell coffee?”
Mack nodded his head. “Eggs and bacon, too. But the place looks spotless.”
He approached the front counter while Brenda stayed at the front door. “You in here, son? If you are, you don't need to be afraid,” he called out. “I'm Detective Abernathy with the police.”
Brenda didn't expect Mack to get an answer, but a stringy head of blond hair rose up from the front counter. He had a dirty face that belonged to a little eleven-year-old body. She knew something was terribly wrong in Green Ridge. “You better get outta here,” the kid warned Mack. “Mr. Frinton told everybody to get to the meeting spot. He was real mad, too.”
Mack eyed the boy, who was wearing nothing but dirty overalls. The child’s bare arms and bony shoulders were showing, baked from the sun. He was skinny—too skinny. “Where's your parents, son?” he asked.
“Ain't got no daddy… he's dead… they buried him in the corn. My momma works here in this diner, but she went home. She thinks I'm home, but I ain't,” he told Mack, remaining behind the front counter. “Saw you hit Melvin. So did Mr. Sallows. He was hiding… went and told Mr. Frinton, too. All the guys are going to the meeting… ain't good. Mr. Frinton only calls a meeting when he wants to kill somebody. That's what my momma told me, anyways.”
Brenda looked at the smiling face of Adam Frinton, then out at the front street. It was deserted. For the moment, the entire town was deserted… except for Melvin, lying where Mack had left him. “Is there a phone?” she asked, turning to the kid.
“Ain't no phones in town. Mr. Frinton don't allow phones, or them wireless phones people carry. Ain't no computers either. Or television. Have to ride all the way to Pepper Plains to find a phone, and that's over fifty miles away,” the kid fussed. “Used to have a phone—still got the phone poles up—but momma said Mr. Frinton ordered the guys to cut all the phone and computer lines. Had to turn in our phone and computer, too. Wasn't fair. Wasn’t fair at all.”
Mack studied the boy’s dirty face and then glanced
back at Brenda. “We're dealing with a cult.”
Brenda stared at Mack for a few seconds and then spoke. “Cults are bad news, Mack. When I was sixteen, I got caught up in a cult.” Brenda glanced around the diner and then looked back at Mack. “I had to fight my way out. I almost died. Once the cult has you, you can't escape.”
Mack was taken back by the confession. Brenda wasn't the type of woman who could be taken in by a smiling face spouting slick lies.
“Son,” he spoke, turning back to Josh, “What is your name? And who is this Adam Frinton person? Tell me all you know.”
He stared at Mack with frightened eyes. Mr. Frinton hated children. He was the only boy left in Green Ridge and that was only because his mother hid him from Adam. “I am Josh. He's a mean man… momma says he's a killer. I believe it,” Josh spoke in a scared voice. “He came into town one day, last year around this time when the sun’s always hot. Never left.”
“You better stay with me, son,” Mack told Josh, feeling his heart ache for the young boy. “Brenda, watch the door. I'll go check the kitchen.”
“Got it.”
“Stay here, Josh,” he ordered Josh. Josh hesitated, and then obeyed, staring at Mack with wide, hungry, eyes.
Mack stepped into a small kitchen, like any other kitchen in any other diner. Except that Adam Frinton's face was plastered all over the brown paneling wall. “Yeah,” Mack grunted, marching to the back door. It opened up into a back alley of hard, cracked, dry dirt. Nothing but open corn fields lay beyond the alley. “Yeah,” Mack grunted again, staring out at the corn with uncertain eyes.
He slammed the back door closed and engaged a flimsy lock, then checked the walk-in cooler. The cold air was both a shock and a relief from the sweltering heat as he searched the interior. A box of unopened donuts was sitting on a metal rack. Mack snatched the box and walked back into the diner. “Here. Eat, son,” he told Josh, handing the boy the donuts.
“Hey, thanks!” Josh accepted the donuts, sat down behind the counter, and dug in.
“Nothing but corn,” Mack told Brenda. “No phones.”
“We're trapped,” Brenda confirmed.
